Trip to Chile, Part Two: Antofagasta

On Friday, after five days in Santiago, the ten of us flew two hours north to Antofagasta, where Maureen and Paul have been living this year.  And while many aspects of Santiago reminded me of other cities around the world, Antofagasta was one of the most unique places I have ever seen.

 

 

The city sits at the edge of the Atacama Desert, the driest desert on earth*, where some places have gone without rain for more than four hundred years. And while I usually associate deserts with things like lizards and cactus, for large stretches of the Atacama Desert there are no living things at all.  It's so desolate and unearthly that NASA uses it a testing ground for Mars vehicles.

 

Then, after hundreds of miles of barren desert, the Atacama runs right up into the Pacific Ocean and all its coastal life - penguins, sea lions, pelicans - and Antofagasta is where they meet.  It's also a boom town that's risen almost overnight to become Chile's wealthiest city due to its copper mines.  Imagine some combination of San Diego, Shanghai, and Death Valley.

There are cormorants on every light post along the coast.

All of that is just to say - it's a really interesting place to visit. We arrived on Friday afternoon, where Maureen and Paul met us at the airport and used their Spanish-speaking abilities to help us pick up our rental cars.

Rosemary and Beatrice got to sit in a row by themselves on the flight.



Julie guards our very large amount of luggage - and Arthur.

Once we were settled in our hotel rooms, we went over to Maureen and Paul's house for an incredible home-cooked dinner.  We also met their adorable dog, Kiara.

The following day Paul took James, Dev, and Julie sightseeing while Mina, Maureen, and I took all the kids to a nearby park to play.  They loved Chile's old-fashioned playgrounds, way more fun - and slightly more dangerous - than the modern American type.



Then we all met up for a wonderful lunch in honor of Maureen and Paul's civil marriage in Chile before driving out to the beach at Playa Juan Lopez.

Louis wearing a hard hat to the beach

 

Giant barnacles

 

 

 

The following day we toured Antofagasta's fish market, which is a riot of pelicans, cormorants, and other sea birds, as well as sea lions. 

 

Pelicans lining up for fish vendor scraps

Finally, on our last morning in Antofagasta, Dev and I took the kids out to some of the abandoned buildings and other "ruins" on the outskirts of the city, on the way back out towards Juan Lopez.  We took hundreds of photos (I collect photos of ruins, cemeteries, and shrines/religious sites, and this combined all three.)

 

William in the Atacama Desert, from the Spindler/Kumar baby abandonment series



 

This gives you some idea of how abruptly the desert turns into the seaside here.

 

Vultures eating a dead sea lion

 

 



The vultures are circling Dev.



Dev taking photos

 

All throughout Chile we found these beautiful road- and seaside shrines in memory of people who had died at sea or on the highways.  Many of them are in incredibly isolated places, hundreds of miles from the nearest city, and yet they were regularly and meticulously maintained.  In fact, during our drive to San Pedro we saw families cleaning the shrines, repairing them, and putting out fresh flowers and candles.

 

 

 

 

We also took some photos of a Romani encampment set up along a stretch of the Antofagasta coast.

And La Portada**, a naturally-occurring rock archway that's also home to a colony of Humboldt penguins.

Then that Sunday, on our eighth day in Chile, we headed out again, this time to drive six hours northeast to San Pedro de Atacama.

* Okay, technically it's the driest non-polar desert on earth.

** Technically, we took these photos of La Portada on the way to the airport, but since they are from Antofagasta I'm including them out of chronological order here.